Pregnant T-Mobile USA employee had to use up holiday time for toilet breaks

A former employee at T-Mobile USA’s call center is claiming that she was forced to use up some of her holiday time because her manager thought she was going to the toilet too often.

Three years ago, Kristi Rifkin was working for a company in Nashville when she became pregnant. Doctor advised her to increase the amount of water she drank each day, and she (obviously) had to go to the rest room more often than usual.

In an interview to ABC News, Rifkin said that the company is giving its employees at the call center two 15 minute breaks and a 30 minute lunch, and “if you can’t take care of your biological needs in that time period, you don’t go.” So she ended up using her vacation time to use the bathroom.

But that’s not all; you see, shortly after she returned to work following the birth, she was fired for a minor infraction on a customer account.

Rifkin has no plans to sue T-Mobile, as it is too expensive, and local labor laws are not favorable anyway to employees. Instead, she just wants to raise public awareness about the problem, calling for paid sick leave to be offered to company employees.

As you would imagine, labor laws in Europe are much different than those in the States and one would have hard time imagining something similar happening in any T-Mobile market across the Old Continent where employees enjoy much better protection. Shame on T-Mobile for acting like this…

Yeah here is something else we do in the USA, we get the story from both sides before we say ” shame on you”… Learn something new “old continent”!!!

Jacob Roggero

that’s not true, american journalism is not often thorough and doesn’t report both sides of the story every time. More often then not its about getting something posted online before anyone else

Roaduardo

Comparing labor laws from North America and Europe are usually interesting to look at. Trying to balance worker’s rights with company goals can be difficult sometimes.

matt

I worked a t-mobile call center (not nashville) near that time and there has to be more to this story. They gave everyone that needed it (and many that did not) FMLA exceptions for extra breaks for medical issue. She most likely could not provide a doctors note explaining the issue or never tried. I do believe that she was fired for a minor infraction but that was most likely because they wanted to fire her for performance issues but HR would not let them without a extreme amount of documentation and multiple performance plans. It was easier to fire her for the one infraction that she made on the account. I hope she has found another job that suits her better